


hbd, t

by b4dide4



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-07 00:09:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18861757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b4dide4/pseuds/b4dide4
Summary: "You broke the rule."





	hbd, t

**Author's Note:**

> Bc I remain a silly (st*pid, hopeless) b*tch.

_Funny that with so, so very many people in the world, it only takes one._

 

She’s sweating by the time she makes it through the door and back into her room. From the combination of too much alcohol, too much dancing and too much enthusiastic, insistent laughter ( _I’m fine, I’m fine, we’re fine, it’s fine_ ). But it’s the last night of the trip and so close to her birthday and that makes too much just exactly what she needs.

She’s peeled off her jacket and started on the knot at the back of her neck when she hears the knock. It’s quiet enough that she thinks it came from — for — another room, but loud enough that it nails her in place, breathless with the hope of something she hadn’t even considered moments before.

It comes again, somehow quieter but more decidedly at her door this time. And it can’t be anyone else. So she gives herself a second to tamp down the flicker of hope she shouldn’t feel and to tell herself it’s because he ran out of soap or shampoo. Or that _she_ did. That thought is enough to settle her firmly back on Earth and carry her casually in the direction of the door.

She opens it.

“Hey.”

“Hey!” she says too quickly, too brightly, too … desperately, she thinks, because he hasn’t stopped by her room once the whole trip (hasn’t stopped by unannounced in months).

The awkwardness of the pause that follows almost has her wishing they’d never come back, never agreed to tours. That she’d never gone through with the second surgery and that they’d just left things (and each other) on that Vancouver high.

But then he’s looking straight into her eyes (she’d started to forget what that was like) and his body relaxes and when he says “hey” again, she responds with “come in.”

He does. But only far enough for her to close the door behind him. It’s then she realizes he’s still got his hands behind his back, and when she says “You broke the rule,” he grins at her. God, she’d missed him really grinning her.

He produces a small, simple paper box with a thin green ribbon then (big enough that her heart doesn’t trip over itself, but small enough that it has to be jewelry).

“It’s your birthday.”

“It’s not my birthday yet.”

“Well, I won’t see y—“

Her eyes drop to the floor.

He flounders for a beat before saying “Are you really turning away my generosity right now?”

So she takes it. Delicately undoes the ribbon — can hear him holding his breath — and gently lifts the lid.

There nestled on top of a fluff of wool is a tiny gold-capped glass vial hung on a sparkling chain. She looks up at him and he nods at it, the “look closer” implied.

She wraps the chain around a finger and brings the necklace up to her face. What’s inside almost reduces her to tears. And she never cries.

He’s the emotional one.

“Rice,” she breathes.

He nods, smiling warmly. “Just the one grain this time.”

She doesn’t realize she’s dropped the box until she feels his hand in hers.

“Happy birthday, T,” he murmurs before leaning in to kiss her cheek.

They stare at each other then. Intently. She can’t decipher his face anymore and she hates it.

Then he takes a deep breath, squeezes her hand and goes.

It’ll be another couple of years before he hands her a magnifying glass, nods at where the necklace is hanging on her chest and says, “Read it.”


End file.
